Suddenly Hope was there anyway.
Maybe Teo is still alive, she tempted smokily through the dense haze.Maybe you’re not feeling him because you’re deep underwater, or because you were practically dead yourself up until a few minutes ago, or because…
She faded out without offering anything more because I had no more; the justifications were all mine.Demigods were thieves.Why make true effort when they could so easily steal?
My hopes very well might have been as empty as I was.Likely, it was all they were, a prolonging of my agony.Hope was perhaps gentler than Heartbreak, but not by much.
My heart squeezed again.Instinctively, I sucked in a breath against the pain that radiated outward like a shockwave.I dragged in only water, and nothing to ease my suffering.
But fruitless as my hopes might prove to be, the dangled bait was enough to force me through the motions.
Enough to make me need to survive.
Not for me.
For Teo.
As long as there was any chance, however slight, he was still out there, inexplicably separate from me, I had to find him.
When I went to free myself from the chain wrapping the length of my body, I called on my power.As always, my blood rose to answer my call.Only where there should have been a gushing torrent, there was but a trickle, a pathetic, weak, sluggish drip that slogged through my veins.
Keeping me alive, but barely.
More dead than alive.
It was a realization so stark, it sliced through the haze and crystallized.
My ability to control blood preceded my rebirth as a sänglure.It was my fae power, unique to me.It had always been with me, much like Teo.Never before had I been without one nor the other.
I knew full well precisely how much blood was supposed to course through my body: a lot.More than in a regular sänglure.More than in an ordinary fae or human too.
The trickle meant …fuck, I wasn’t sure what all it meant other than I must be starving.
Empty in yet another way I shouldn’t be.
Maybe the haze was greater than the effect of Heartbreak’s torture.More than the loss of the half that made me whole.
Maybe it was bloodlust, after all.Grief and bloodlust wrapped together into one maddening gift.Wasn’t that just fucking precious?
I screamed into the water because I could.I’d sworn I’d never again allow myself to be imprisoned.I didn’t know what else to do to make it through just one more moment…
I needed Teo … to find Teo.
Of the two of us, I had always been the strongest.But I was only strong because he was always there when I needed him.And I was always there for him.It was how we were.How we’d always been.
I screamed and screamed and screamed until my cries devolved into sobs.My desperation barreled through my grief as if to suffocate me with its unbearable weight.
But I was already underwater.If I’d been able to drown, I would have done so long before.
My cries softened to moans.The water was too quiet.Too dark.Too cold.
I was still too alone.
Before I fully accepted what I must do, my body was moving again, as if all on its own.
My blood was insufficient, which meant my power was insufficient.But shitty odds had never stopped me before.Shitty odds were what I’d cut my teeth on, and later what I’d sharpened my fangs on.
There were few things in this world I knew intimately.People, there were even fewer.But I knew thefightlike I did my own body.It could have been another demigod for how real it felt.Shit was bad, really bad.Okay,fine.I couldfight, fight, and fightsome fucking more.I didn’t need to think to fight.Didn’t need to plan.Only needed to get out of my own way and fight against the heartbreak, the haze, and the bloodlust too.
